Let's pray together. Our merciful and glorious Heavenly
Father, we find great hope, comfort in
the promises that you've made and the work that you performed
in the person of thy dear son, giving us that solid rock on
which we can stand. Lord, our sin has proved to us
that all other ground is sinking sand. We thank you for the forgiveness
of sin. We thank you that You've put
them away and separated them from us as far as the East is
from the West. We thank you that you remember
them no more. We ask, Father, that you'd be
pleased this hour to open that which no man can shut, open the
windows of heaven, open our hearts, open thy word. Lord, open our
understanding, open our eyes, enable us to set our affections
on things above where Christ is seated at thy right hand.
And we ask, Lord, that you would give us a holy anticipation of
the truth that we just sang about the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and that you would cause us to be watchful and waiting
We ask it in his name. Amen. The last stanza of that hymn. When he shall come. With trumpet
sound, oh may I then in him be found. Dressed in his righteousness
alone. Faultless to stand. Before his throne. If you'll turn with me in your
Bibles to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, I'm certain that the hymn writer had this passage
in mind when he wrote those words. We've been studying 1 Thessalonians
the first hour on Sunday morning. We find ourselves this morning
at verse 13 and I've titled this, A Comforting Hope. A Comforting
Hope. Notice in verse 18 where the
Lord tells us to comfort one another with these words. And then in verse 11 of the next
chapter, wherefore, comfort yourselves together and edify one another
even as you also do. And so our Lord has has given
us some great and precious promises here in our text and and I hope
that they will be a comfort to us. I know that sinners are in
need of comfort. The Lord commands us to speak
comfort, not some sort of pious platitude
that just gives men peace of mind, or speaking lies as the
false prophets do when they say peace, peace, when in fact there
is no peace, but that we would be comforted, comfortee, Comfort
ye my people, sayeth the Lord, speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem
and tell them, and here's the comfort, their warfare is accomplished. That's the comfort, their warfare
is accomplished. Their battle with death, Satan,
the wrath that is to come, It's all been put away by the sacrifice
that the Lord Jesus Christ made of himself on Calvary's cross.
He got the victory. He got the victory. And you know,
in that passage that I just quoted from in Isaiah chapter 40, the
first question that Isaiah has to the Lord is, where do I begin
this message of comfort? What do I tell them? And the
Lord told the prophet, he said, tell them their grass. Just tell
them they're grass. Tell them that they have nothing,
they can do nothing, they know nothing. Tell them they're sinners. Tell them they're sinners. And
that way they won't be looking to themselves for the hope and
comfort that only I can give. The more we see of the glory
of Christ and how that the Lord Jesus Christ is all, he's all,
he's all in our salvation, he's everything. The more we come
to realize that we have no contribution to make, he's done it all, he's
done it all by himself, he got the victory and that's our comfort. And the hope that the believer
has is here in our text Comfort ye one another with these
words we saw in verse 18. What comfort and what hope we
have when God gives to his people faith to believe him. We should
believe God. You can't not believe him. We believe every word he's spoken,
everything he said. And therein is our comfort, the
precious promises of God. All, yea, yes, and amen, sure,
in Christ. God's Word is a comfort because
it speaks of Christ. The Lord, in Luke chapter 24,
the scripture says he opened their understanding that they
might understand the scriptures. And they saw that in God's written
word was the revelation of God's living word, the Lord Jesus Christ. We hang all our hopes on him
and what comfort he gives us. The Holy Spirit is called the
comforter, the comforter. If I go not away, the comforter
will not come. But when he comes, he will lead
you into all truth and he will take that which is of me and
reveal it unto you. He'll reveal Christ to you. That's the ministry of the Holy
Spirit. Men err when they exalt the Spirit just for the Spirit's
sake. The Spirit is sent to exalt Christ. And that's why he's called the
comforter. Notice in verse 13, but I would
not have you to be ignorant brethren. I would not have you to be without
understanding. I would not have you to be without
knowledge because your hope comes from the knowledge of the truth
that the Lord has given in his word. And it's not just knowing
the truth, but it's loving the truth. It's loving what God,
you know, the Lord said in second Thessalonians, because they had
no love for the truth, they had no love for Christ. They studied
the scriptures for all sorts of reasons. Men study the Bible
in order to get an advantage over other men. They studied
the Bible in order to attain some knowledge. And the Lord
tells us that knowledge puffeth up. If the knowledge that the
Lord doesn't give doesn't lead us to Christ and cause us to
love Him, because they had no love for the truth, therefore
God sent them a strong delusion that they should believe the
lie. And so when the Lord says, I
would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, I would not have you
to be without knowledge, He's not talking about just information
or doctrine. He's talking about knowing Christ.
This is life eternal that they might know thee, the only true
God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. There's the only knowledge
that matters to know him. And if we're to know him, he will
reveal himself by his word. And so the Lord says to you and
me in these words, of comfort, I would not have you to be ignorant
brethren concerning them which are asleep, that you sorrow not. And I'm so thankful for the last
phrase of this verse because the Lord is saying not that believers
don't sorrow when they lose a loved one in this life, but they don't
sorrow as those who have no hope. Their sorrow is different, and
their sorrow is mixed with joy and hope for the passing of their
loved one, knowing that that they're with the Lord and knowing
that we will follow them and knowing that death is not the
end. We have a sure hope. And the Lord tells us in Romans
chapter five, verse five, that our hope maketh not a shame. In other words, it doesn't disappoint. Normally, when we use the word
hope, we're talking about the desire of something that
may or may not happen. You know, I hope that this will
happen. I hope that that will happen. And that's not what God's
word means by hope. And that's not the hope that
believers have based on the revelation that God has given us of himself. Our hope is a sure expectation. It is a hope that does not make
us shamed. It is a hope that is the anchor
for our soul, the scripture says. It's a sure hope. It's a good
hope. It's not, well, you know, I hope
this or I hope that. That's the hope of the unbeliever, which is, in fact,
no hope at all. That's no hope at all. We have a confident expectation
through faith in our God who cannot lie. That's a good hope. And what a blessing it is when
the Lord gives us that confidence, that assurance, that hope. We sorrow, yes, but not as others
which have no hope. Jeremiah chapter 14 verse eight
refers to the Lord Jesus Christ himself as the hope of Israel. And the Lord says in the New
Testament that Christ in us is our hope of glory. And so it
doth not, 1 John chapter three, yet appear what we shall be.
But we know that when we shall see him, we'll see him as he
is and be made like him. He's our hope. He's the one that
we long to see in the fullness of his glory. He's the one that
we long to be made like. And so he himself, According
to Jeremiah 14, eight is the hope of Israel. And the rest of that verse says,
and the savior thereof. He's our hope and he's our savior. Ephesians chapter two, verse
12 says that those who are without God in this world are without
hope. They're without hope. The Old Testament saints had
this hope and they didn't have the revelation that we have. Scripture says of Abraham that
he saw his day. He saw his day. Here's the comforting
truth about faith, brethren. Abraham saw his day and he rejoiced. He rejoiced, he longed to see
it. He looked for a city whose builder
and maker was God. There were plenty of cities,
physical cities in that land, but not whose builder and maker
was God, not a city which hath sure foundations. See, that's
a reference to Abraham looking to that eternal city. of glory
that was promised to him. And here's the glorious truth
about faith. Faith believes what's been revealed. Faith believes what's been revealed.
It believes Abraham didn't have the revelation that you and I
have, but he believed everything that had been revealed to him.
You see that? And because he believed what
God said, He had a sure hope and he was able to rejoice in
the fulfillment of those promises. I think sometimes we think, well,
you know, there's so much we don't understand. There's so
much we don't know. Yes, there is. There is. But faith believes what's been
revealed. And in that sense, Though sanctification,
holiness, is not progressive, faith is. Faith is progressive. We grow in faith. Lord, increase
our faith. Lord, reveal more of your glory
and of your grace to me. That's what it is to grow in
grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. So the
only question that you and I have to ask ourselves right now is
not do we believe something that has not been revealed, but do
we believe everything that God has made plain to us? Everything
that God has spoken, everything that he has revealed, we have
bowed to. We have responded with truth,
Lord, show me more, show me more. And faith always just simply
believes what's been revealed. The Old Testament saints believed
God. Turn back with me, or I'm sorry,
forward to the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 11. Now faith is the, is the substance,
it is the ground of confidence. That's what that word substance
means. The ground of confidence is through faith. Of things hoped
for. You see, this hope that we have
is sure. It's a confident expectation
through faith. And this faith is the evidence. It is the evidence of things
not seen. Abraham didn't see what we see. He didn't have the
fullness of the revelation made as we have it. And yet he had the evidence given
to him. in the revelation that God had
given it. For by it the elders obtained a good report. He's
talking about the Old Testament saints. Through faith we understand
that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that the things
which are seen are not made of the things which do appear. There
right there, that one verse tells us the problem with evolution.
Evolution says the things which are seen come from the things,
physical things. Faith rejects that. Faith rejects
the theory of evolution. Faith believes that God is the
cause of all things and that he spoke and that it came to be. So all these Old Testament saints
in Hebrews chapter 11 were men and women of faith. They believed
what God had revealed. And now we go back to our text.
But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning
them which are asleep, that you sorrow not, even as others which
have no hope. Romans chapter four says of Abraham
and Sarah, who were a hundred years old and 90 years old when
God promised to give them a child, And it says, against hope, against
all natural evidences of the possibility of this happening,
against hope, he believed in hope. Against any physical evidence,
against any thing that reason could conclude, he believed God. He just believed God. Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 17
says, hope in the end, saith the Lord, for the children of God shall
come to their border, shall come to their border. Don't you love
the story of the disciples on the Sea of Galilee and that tremendous
storm? They thought they were going
to die. These were experienced fishermen, they thought they
were going to drown. And they cried out, Lord careth not that
we perish. And the Lord spoke, and the seas
immediately became calm. And they were amazed. What manner
of men is this that even the seas and the winds obey his voice. And then the scripture says this,
and immediately they were on the other side. The way of the Lord is through
the seas and there's going to be some storms and some turbulence
and faith is what sustains us to cry out to him in those times
of need, knowing that there's going to come a day when he's
going to speak and calm all the storms and all the seas, and
we're going to find ourselves safe on the other side. Safe
on the other side. Oh, what hope. This is not, this
is not a An unfounded hope. This is not
a hope that we just dreamed up. This is what the Lord's telling
us. I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren. Zechariah chapter 9 verse 12
refers to believers as prisoners of hope. I love that. The child of God who's been given
faith by God is a prisoner of hope. He's he's bound to Christ. He's bound to God's word. He
Paul said, I'm a prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's
what we are. We're prisoners of hope. We're
prisoners of Christ. We can't escape and we don't
want to escape. It's the only place of safety
that there is. Peter says in first Peter, chapter
one, verse three, that we have been begotten, we have been birthed,
spiritually born again unto a lively hope. This is not a dead hope,
this is not a cold hope, this is not something that may or
may not be, this is a lively hope. It's been made alive by
the Spirit of God. Alive in our hearts. Those who have no hope, listen
to what Job says in Job chapter seven, verse 14. The hope of
the hypocrite shall be cut off and his trust shall be as the
spider's web. Jonathan Edwards preached a message
entitled Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and I know there's
a section in that message where he uses the analogy of a sinner,
one who has no hope, one who doesn't believe God, one who
knows nothing of Christ and has no faith, as being dangled over
the fires of hell by a spider's web. And I'm sure this is the
passage he got that from. The hypocrites hope and that
which in which they trust. What are they trusting in? They're
trusting in their free will. They're trusting in their good
works. They're trusting in something that they've done or potentially
could do in order to be saved. They're not trusting Christ.
They don't believe that Christ is all. They don't believe that
he's in all. They don't they don't look to him as their hope. And I want you to see how the
Lord refers to those who have passed from this life, who have
died in faith, as asleep. Asleep. They're asleep, they're
not dead. Now he's speaking spiritually,
they are physically dead. But physical death doesn't bring
spiritual death. The Bible speaks of the second
death. You see, the truth is that those
who are born twice only die once. And those who are only born once
die twice. We can't think about this glorious
hope of being asleep without looking at Lazarus in John chapter
11. Would you turn with me in your
Bibles to John chapter 11? We're not going to read the whole
story, but I do want to read a few verses from it. Word comes to our Lord, who is
a couple days away from Bethany. that the one whom he loves. And I'm so thankful that the Holy Spirit didn't say, Lord,
the one who loves you is sick, or the one whom you love is sick.
I'm grateful for that. Notice in verse three, therefore,
his sister sent unto him saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest
is sick. She's asking the Lord to come
and she's pleading with him on the grounds not of Lazarus' love
for Christ. Lord, he loves you and because
of his love for you, surely you would reward him for that love
by coming to deliver him from this sickness. That's not it
at all. Oh Lord, the one whom you love. The ground on which you are going
to help my brother is not his love for you, but your love for
him. And when Jesus heard that, he
said, this sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God,
that the son of God might be glorified thereby. Now brethren,
that's the cause of everything. Everything that God's doing in
your life and in my life, everything God's doing in this world is
for his glory. It's the chief end of all things.
It's to glorify himself in the person of his son, the Lord Jesus
Christ. That's why the scripture says,
Christ is all and he is in all. It is all for his glory. And
our Lord makes it clear that we know what's gonna happen.
Lazarus, he's not gonna be sick by the time the Lord gets there.
He's gonna be dead in the tomb for three days. So the Lord lingers. He stays where he is and allows
Lazarus to die and to be put into the grave. And then in verse 11, These things said he, and after
that he said unto them, our friend, Lazarus sleepeth. And by the
time the word got to the Lord, Lazarus was already dead. He
wasn't sick anymore. He's dead. And the Lord tells
the disciples, he's asleep. But I go that I may awake him
out of sleep. Then said the disciples, Lord,
if he sleep, he shall do well. Albeit Jesus spake of his death,
but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep. Then said Jesus unto them plainly,
Lazarus is dead. You've not been given the revelation
that will be given to understand what this sleep really is. And so I'll speak to you here
again. Isn't it comforting that the
Lord speaks to us on the level in which we can receive and understand? He knows that we're made of dust.
And think about a parent leaning over the railing of an infant's
bed and talking baby talk to that child. You wouldn't try
to carry on an adult conversation with an infant. You would condescend
to that infant's level in order to communicate to that infant
your love and your approval and your kindness and gentleness
to that child. And that's the way the Lord does
us. He leans over the portals of
heaven and he speaks to us in language that we can understand. And these disciples, he told
the disciples at one point, he said, I have things to say to
you that you cannot yet bear. You can't bear them. You'll learn
them in time after the Holy Spirit comes, but right now you can't
bear them. And they couldn't understand this thing of sleep.
And so the Lord spoke to them and said, he's dead. And then verse 23, and Jesus
said unto her, thy brother shall rise again.
He's now back in Bethany, Mary and Martha grieving, sorrowful
over the death of their brother. And Martha said unto him, I know
that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.
And Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection. and the life. He that believeth in me, though
he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth
in me shall never die. Believest thou this? Now he's
giving them more. That's what our Lord's saying
here concerning them which are asleep. Now, men have tried to
explain away this matter of sleeping as if it's some sort of a soul
sleep where when a believer dies he goes into some sort of place
where he waits on the second coming and the resurrection. I don't believe that. No, the
scripture says to be absent from the body is to be present from
the Lord. And the scripture tells us in Revelation chapter 6 that
at the end of this life, time shall be no more. Time shall
be no more. So when a person escapes this
world through death, they leave what we know as time and they
go into eternity. Here again, we have the Lord
speaking of a future resurrection in our text because he's talking
to men in terms of time. In terms of time, there will
be a future resurrection. But in terms of eternity, it's
already taken place. When we close our eyes in death
and wake up in heaven, we're not gonna look around and be
comparing what we're experiencing to what we just came out of.
No, time shall be no more. Heaven would lose all of its
glory if that was the case. We're going to discover in that
moment, and there we're using a word to describe time, that
we've always been there. We've always been there. Time
shall be no more. And so our Lord is, you know,
herein lies the problem with the natural mind in trying to
understand creation. What do the scientists tell us? They tell us that there's dark
matter out there in the universe. They call it the God particle.
And they think that this dark matter can be somehow discovered
if we just get a strong enough telescope or a strong enough
microscope we can discover this dark matter and we can then understand
everything and they explain everything in terms of time. And there's
one great factor that they can't factor in and that is that God
can't be discovered by a telescope. And he's not matter. And he's
certainly not dark. And he's not a particle. Colossians
chapter 1 tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ is the one who holds
all things together, that he might get the preeminence and
the glory. We have a God who's holding it
all together. And there is an eternal realm
of truth and glory in Christ that is completely outside of
time. So when we pass from this life,
we leave time as we know it, and we go into eternity. And so that's, Lazarus, come forth, come forth. Oh, let's read the rest of our
text quickly. Verse 14, for if we believe that
Jesus died and rose again, he died to put away the sins
of his people, he was successful in what he did and God raised
him from the dead as the one and only proof that God was satisfied. God was
satisfied. I cannot allow my, this is the,
the Lord set a wicked and and an adulterous generation seeketh
after a sign, but no sign will be given unto it except for the
sign of Jonah." This one sign, the resurrection of Christ, who
spent three days and three nights in the belly of the whale. And then he cried, salvations
of the Lord. And that whale vomited him up
onto dry ground. What a picture. The grave could
not hold the Lord Jesus Christ. He conquered it. He opened it. He defeated it. And God raised him from the dead.
And if we believe that Jesus died and rose according to the
scriptures, not just in the historical fact of the death and resurrection
of Christ, but all that that means, Even so, them also which sleep
in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you
by the word of the Lord." Oh, it's so authoritative. It's so
comforting, comforting one another with these words. This is God's
word. This is not some fable. This
is not something man came up with. This we say unto you by
the word of the Lord. No man ever spake like this man
before. Thus saith the Lord. He spoke
with authority, didn't he? And he still does. That we which are alive and remain
unto the coming of the Lord will not, and that word prevent means
go before. These believers were, they didn't
have the full revelation that we have. They didn't have these
words until now when they get this letter, And they're trying
to understand, you know, we've got brethren and family members
that are dying physically and how is that going to work as
far as, as far as, they were anticipating the coming of Christ.
These believers, they woke up every morning thinking maybe
today's the day he's going to come back. If they had reason to do that,
how much more reason we have to do that. Maybe this will be
the day. And so our Lord says to them, those of you which remain are
not going to go before them which are asleep for the Lord himself
shall descend from heaven with a shout and with the voice of
the archangel and the trump of God and the dead in Christ shall
rise first. Then we which are alive and remain
shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Therefore, therefore, comfort
ye one another with these words." Oh, what hope we have. It's a
good hope, it's a sure hope. You know, men, men fantasize
their fleshly minds over what's going to be in heaven and what
heaven is going to look like and what it, when God describes
heaven he tells us more, he tells us the one thing that's going
to be there that's the Lord Jesus Christ and the fullness of his
glory but he describes heaven more by what's not going to be
there than by what's going to be there. Time's not going to
be there. Sin's not gonna be there. There'll
be no more sea, no more turbulence, no more separation, no more sickness,
no more death, no more sorrow, no more curse, no more deception. Revelation chapter 18, verse
21, no more Babylon. Revelation 7, 16, no more hunger,
no more thirst, no more corruption. No more faith. No more hope. In that day, our faith will be
our sight. Why do you hope for something
which you see? There's no more hope in heaven. No more faith
in heaven. We see it, it's our sight. And
hope? Hope will be our experience.
You don't hope for something. We're hoping now, but in the
day in which it comes, there's no more need for hope. And of
these, faith, hope, and love. The greatest of these is love.
Why? Because in heaven, that's all there's gonna be. All there's
gonna be. Perfect love. Perfect righteousness. Comfort. ye one another with
these words, amen. All right, let's take a break.